


another thing coming undone

by harlequindreaming (armydoctor)



Series: runaway [1]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, More hurt less comfort, allusions to rape/non-con, gratuitous use of the word "primary", kidnapped!Bond, kidnapped!Q, mild depictions of violence and torture, vengeful!Q
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-21
Updated: 2013-04-21
Packaged: 2017-12-08 22:37:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/766841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/armydoctor/pseuds/harlequindreaming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One debriefing reads: <em>I was forcibly extracted first.</em><br/>The other one, the messier and much more abrasive one, reads: <em>Those fucking incompetent idiots were supposed to get him to safety first.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	another thing coming undone

**Author's Note:**

> Fic beta'd by the forever amazing [Sarah_Ellie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarah_Ellie/pseuds/Sarah_Ellie).
> 
> Please read the tags. Certain descriptions of torture go into some detail; the rape/non-con is only alluded to. There is anger, and there is hurt, and the comfort is to be found in vengeance.
> 
> My recollections of Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace are haphazard at best, so forgive the (ab)use of non-Skyfall characters. None of this is for profit; no characters are my own.

 

 

 

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

 

When the Quartermaster arrives in New York in the middle of the mission, slightly off-kilter from the drugs used to cope with the flight, James Bond knows the stakes have been raised.

Q is sitting at the hotel desk when Bond wakes up, already on a call with M, fingers almost on autopilot as he types. Bond watches, sleepily amused, blinking in the winter morning sunlight; it’s not often someone manages to sneak into his room without waking him up. He sits up from the bed – he’s only done recon thus far, so he’s able to sleep – and stretches, unabashedly naked. Q doesn’t turn around, but Bond feels the weight of a gaze reflected off the laptop screen.

“We’ll check in once we achieve the primary objective,” Q says evenly into his mic, reaching to the side for a tablet. Bond touches fingers to the Walther under his pillow, then hunts down a cigarette. (Q had remotely disabled the smoke alarms when Bond had arrived six days ago.)

“Yes, Sir,” Q affirms, and shuts his laptop. Bond taps his ash out in his empty mug.

“Fancy a shag?” he asks, stretching luxuriously.

“Ha bloody ha,” Q quips in reply, tapping out something on the tablet. He adjusts his glasses. Bond takes a drag.

Thirty minutes later and Q’s legs are hooked over Bond’s shoulders as the headboard thwacks against the wall. His glasses are attempting a backwards slide off his face, and his hair (already mussed from his self-induced coma on the plane) is a riot of curls on the pillow. Bond’s lips quirk, a slash of a smile, a knife wound from one of the many blades usually concealed on his person.

They have a full 36 hours for the primary objective, anyway.

 

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

“You made yourself a Walther?”

“Do you honestly think I made _yours_ first?”

 

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

The decision is frighteningly easy to make, both during and in hindsight. Bond stands at the sill of a large, broken picture window, poised to jump. Q is on his knees with the barrel of a gun pressed to his nape. Even without Bellamy’s voice in his ear (his, only his, not Q’s, Q would make a stupid decision for the first time in a very, very long while if he heard, thank god for loose earpieces) telling him,  _Q must be kept alive,_ Bond would make the same choice.

His Walther skitters to join Q at the floor by the Major’s feet. His dusty, blood-and-dirt-stained, expensive shoes hit the floor.

“Clever boy,” the Major mocks, sneering, carding his fingers through Q’s curls. Q shudders.

Bond very briefly considers pulling rank, just to make the man shut up, and almost laughs.

 

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

This is for Bond, and that was why the gun had been at Q’s neck. This is for Bond and that is why they have him strapped to a chair, all manner of damned restraints, while Q is whipped before him. They pretend it is for Q, to make him sell secrets, hack countries, but it is for Bond.

Physically, for a time, all Bond suffers is a handful of (sharp, brass-knuckled) hits to the face, a few (steel-toe-booted) kicks to the ribs, and some blows from a (titanium-alloy) rod.

Emotionally, however, is a different matter.

When they come at night, for Q’s pretty hair and smart mouth and flushed cheeks; when they take him where Bond can see ( _does he fuck you like this, clever boy, does he?_ ) – that is when Bond realizes it is for him.

There is a long and winding story about Major Greyson’s wife, but Bond isn’t listening.

They’re seated back to back, him and Q, their chairs linked and bolted to the floor. Q’s arms are strapped at the sides of his chair but Bond’s wrists are tied to one of the rungs of the back, so their hands are near but never touch. Warmth bleeds from their touching shoulders, and sometimes actual blood too. The wall in front of Q is a one-way mirror and he reads Greyson’s lips more than he hears the actual words

The red light under Bond’s chair blinks away merrily, and distractedly Q hums a Christmas carol under his breath. Bond strains to hear that instead, because it’s better than any scream or sob that’s been torn from Q’s mouth, better than the drivel coming from Greyson’s lips.

Q’s gaze won’t leave the blinking red dot and he won’t stop humming.

Bond almost smiles his knife smile.

If only it were weapon enough.

 

 

By the third week, Greyson pretends to be growing impatient ( _my name is Mikhail, Q is the seventeenth letter of the alphabet, I’m just a Tech Services supervisor, I don’t know, I don’t know_ ), but doesn’t have to fake his creativity. Q watches the brand hover over the flames, turn red to white to utterly terrifying, mentally recites estimates of temperatures, converting from Celsius to Fahrenheit to Kelvin. Bond is practically frozen in place, he’s holding himself so rigid.

“Where are the other agents?” the Major asks sweetly, rhetorically, and doesn’t wait for Q to answer before signaling the brand be applied to the young man on his knees.

( _I don’t know, my name is Mikhail, I was sent to give 007 some tech, I’m just a Tech Services supervisor, I don’t know, I don’t know,_ more and more shrill and hysterical by the second)

The pattern is almost childishly simple: alternate, left and right shoulder blade, parallel to the ridge of bone. The brand is slightly tacky by the time Greyson turns to Bond.

( _Q is the seventeenth letter of the alphabet._ Q is a starfish in bed on their off-days. Q is a lover of Dr. Who, especially Ten. Q is sometimes still a child in Bond’s eyes. Q is Bond’s world.)

“Perhaps you’ll be more talkative than your quartermaster, Mr. Bond,” he smirks, simpering. The smell of singed skin wafts over as an afterthought, and Bond knows the farce is up.

 

 

They’d demanded Q hack countries, give them stats. They’d demanded he give them passcodes, access, names, numbers. In between, they’d whipped his back, kicked his gut, punched his face, and branded him. They’d had him on his knees at nights.

Now that they are done shaking Bond up, now that Q is the one strapped to a chair with a blinking light while Bond is the one on his knees, now Q takes stock of the damage done.

He determines himself lucky and swallows down the bile in his throat.

 

 

When they finally settle Bond back into the chair behind Q, he is mercifully unconscious. His head lolls back against Q’s shoulder, then rolls forward to hang over his chest. Q waits for and count shallow breaths.

They’re quite good, these people, at keeping them alive.

 

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

Because talking with Bond means further punishment, Q sits in his chair and counts. 15 hollow blocks up, 16 across. Seven bars on the wall window, six on the door. Three locks – one chain, one slide, one deadbolt. One blink every two seconds.

28 days, 16 hours and perhaps 37 minutes of nightmare.

Infinite ragged, wet breaths.

1,239,510 red blinks.

 

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

There is a terrible crashing noise up and to the left at the same time Bond’s earpiece (left in God-knows-why) crackles to life. Q looks up; Bond does not ( _cannot_ )( _won’t_ ) _._

“Found them!” Felix Leiter’s relief is obvious. “Fuck, Bond, are you—”

Bellamy’s harried voice in Bond’s ear is undoubtedly in Leiter’s, too. “ _Is the primary secure?_ ”

Q’s head is still pressed to Bond’s while the other American agents work to get the quartermaster out of his restraints. It’s noisy, what with clunky rescue gear and gunfire outside and shouted orders, but neither agent doubts that the quartermaster has heard those four words.

Leiter swallows. “Agent 007 is severely injured but conscious. The—”

“ _Is the primary **secure**._ ” Mallory’s – M’s – voice is flat as it cuts over both Leiter and Bellamy.

Leiter chances another glance at Q, who’s being lifted to his feet by two overeager CIA agents, and purses his lips. “Yes, sir.”

“ _Are you certain?_ ” Leiter’s face tightens. Three more rescue op agents come in; gadgets spill from their arms.

“This is all they had,” one of them says, and Leiter ducks his head. “Yes, sir,” he repeats in monotone, hands moving efficiently to disable the bomb.

“ _Move the primary to the safe point._ ” Q cannot hear this, but he is swiveling, struggling to reach Bond, eyes wide and terrified as if he does hear M’s every word. “ _Wait for them to be clear, then extract Agent 007._ ”

Any data has been, of course, retrieved. The primary is secure: Q hadn’t talked.

 

 

Despite the magnitude of his injuries, the decision is easy to make. Agent 007 simply nods, and Q is taken from the room. Bond slumps forward, nearly unconscious, as Leiter diffuses the bomb. The light under the chair winks out.

54 days, 9 hours, 42 minutes. 4,700,520 blinks.

 

 

They’re half-dragging, half-carrying Agent 007 out to the Apache copter when they hear three successive gunshots.

 

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

Bond wakes up in a hospital room, fuzzy with sedative. The last thing he remembers is mumbling to Leiter that when he gets better, he’s going to _kill_ Finnigan because the man’s job, his _only goddamn job_ was to move the primary to the copter and Q had gotten shot.

His monitors blink with red lights around him. It is a little over a minute before he realizes Q will have these too.

He is seconds away from attempting to break out (it will be much easier than Medical, this hospital is hardly MI6) when there is an unobtrusive cough from his right.

Q, battered and bruised and bitterly amused, sits in a chair by his bed. Ridiculously, he is still wearing his old glasses, the frame taped at the nose and one of the lenses spiderwebbed at the corner.

“I didn’t,” he says as he leans in for a kiss, “like the lights either.”

 

 

“If you had been alone,” Q asks, fingers obsessively picking at a wrinkle in the sheet. “If you had been alone, how long?”

Bond considers. The average time for the rescue of an MI6 agent is four days.

“Two weeks,” he answers, clinical, a dry smile (not the knife smile, no) tugging at his lips. “Fourteen days, or a full 336 hours after confirmation.”

336 hours. 604,800 blinks.

 

 

“I would have found you,” Q later tells the darkness insistently, when he thinks Bond’s asleep. Or when he pretends, rather; Q isn’t stupid. He knows it will be a while, a very long and trying while, before either he or Bond ever really sleep. “I would have taken less than two weeks.”

The anger bubbles to the surface, shoving aside the shock, when he gets to the part where he wonders what would happen if it would have taken more.

 

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

One debriefing report reads: _I was forcibly extracted first._

The other one, the messier and much more abrasive one, reads: _Those fucking incompetent arseholes were supposed to bring him to safety first._

 

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

Back at their flat, in their bed, Q sips his tea and reads the rescue op transcripts while Bond sleeps beside him. He scrutinizes the steps taken by the second-in-command he’d so carefully trained, and the subsequent actions travelling down the food chain of Q-Branch. He sifts through surveillance retrieval, data patterning, cross-references, and dead-ends. Then he shoves all the papers off the bed and fetches himself a stiff drink.

Then two.

Six.

 

 

Bond wakes up and wanders out to find Q sprawled out on the couch (right side out), empty bottle of whiskey clutched to his chest. The quartermaster is shirtless, a spotty alcohol flush creeping up his chest. Bond hovers near Q’s feet.

It is a few minutes before Q acknowledges him. “I wouldn’t have—” He pauses, face scrunching up and voice catching. The whiskey bottle rolls to the ground but doesn’t shatter on the carpet.

Bond tentatively sits on the arm of the chair.

“Not in two weeks,” Q bites out, and Bond realizes it is anger and not desperation that shakes his voice. Q sits up, fury making his cheeks splotchy. He’s quite beautiful.

“Why the _hell_ is it only two weeks?”

 

 

(Neither report relays the number of times they’d been told that MI6 wasn’t coming, not for them, never.

They don’t say, either, how after 2 weeks—14 days—336 hours, Bond had started to think, _not for me, they won’t._

They don’t say how Q hadn’t ever thought the same thing. He’d been so sure.)

 

 

They kiss – infuriatingly only kiss, Q laid reverently out on the sheets and Bond nosing up the left (always the left, these days) side of his neck, nipping the pulse. Wide, roughened, invisibly-bloodied hands grip still-too-thin hips.

“You’re angry,” Q muses, after Bond’s kissed his fill. They lie tangled under the sheets, Q propped up on his left elbow to watch Bond still breathe, still breathe ( _ragged, wet breaths_ ). “Why are you also angry?”

Bond locks eyes with Q, then deliberately drops his gaze to Q’s right shoulder. The skin is a starburst in shiny, simmering red.

“The primary is secure,” he quotes mockingly, his smile bitter (still not the knife smile, the grin Q likes best).

Q’s lips purse in a thin, thin line as his shoulder twinges, as he thinks of Queen and country giving up on this man after _two weeks._

“You’re not a bloody big ship.”

 

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

It is, Q considers as he remotely detonates a warehouse in Syria, all about self-control. If he doesn’t think about it – doesn’t think about how after weeks of being tortured in the name of Queen and country, Bond might have been left to blow up in that warehouse so long as _the primary_ was secure, doesn’t think about how indefinitely those weeks might have stretched out had _the primary_ not been there with him – if he doesn’t think about all that, he can keep himself in check. No matter that the stripes down his shoulder blades (now an ugly reddish-brown, still shiny) stretch and sting whenever he types, reaches for other equipment, sips his tea. No matter that he has to turn over command of the next field operation to Bellamy and Mackenzie since the agent is captured (briefly, only 72 hours, 129,600 blinks). No matter that he does most work standing up, now, because sitting means leaning back means pain.

No matter that after 009 has finished her mission, Q has to go back to proving to M that _the primary was secure._

The small mountain of hard drives and flash drives and laptops on his desk neatly, efficiently diminishes as one by one, they come up clean.

The primary was secure. They’d trained him, hadn’t they, not to give anything away?

 

 

It has been roughly four months since rescue.

5,184,000 blinks.

 

 

It is, he considers as he builds Bond another Walther, all about control.

Keep this under wraps, and he will get the chance.

 

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

“Gun.”

 _Surrendered._ “Walther.”

“Brand.”

 _Skin._ “Armani.”

“Data.”

 _Primary. Secure._ “Code.”

 

 

Bond goes back to work, immerses him back into the world of a Double-O. Sometimes he visits the gallery on off-days, looks for the painting, the tugboat and the warship, and thinks about old dogs and new tricks.

It’s new to his vocabulary, at least, that _primary_ doesn’t always mean a person, and _secure_ doesn’t always mean alive. A rescue op is only as good as the resources it saves.

When 006 had brought the drives and laptops in with orders from M to check, make sure they were _secure_ , Bond had almost snapped the wrist of his oldest friend.

This is his self-control. He shoots what MI6 tells him to shoot (and a few other things, besides, because he wouldn’t be 007 if he didn’t), blows up what MI6 tells him to blow up (and sometimes the things they say to leave alone), and retrieves what they tell him to bring back (his own equipment, as always, is return optional). If he takes a little for himself, some intel here, a contact there, the quartermaster at the other end of his line says nothing.

 

 

“It’s the reality of things,” Moneypenny had said apologetically, after she’d reviewed their debriefing reports.

 _No one is irreplaceable,_ was what she’d meant, _no matter how many triggers pulled or programs coded_.

Q smiles blandly and Bond shrugs. Q’s seen it and Bond’s been through it. It’s the MI6 reality.

The plan is to bring that smug reality crashing about their ears.

 

 

Bond isn’t some decrepit, run-down warship. Bond and his anger are like a wave. He surges forward, over and over, with each mission – never spent, never ebbing. He drags back a little of the sand of MI6 with his every retreat to safehouses, to their flat (a gun here, a knife there, some sleight of hand picking up a key). He smoothes the stones, keeps relationships professional and pleasant, until his rep is shiny again. He shifts along the surface.

Q isn’t the tugboat; he is the undertow, the sudden, dragging water flow. He lets M and Tanner and Moneypenny believe he is not angry because the primary was secured. (The silly things; even boy quartermasters understand that primaries are not always people, and a rescue op is only as good as the resources it saves.) He ripples through the waters of MI6, steady and undisruptive, subtly dragging away what resources he can with his current. He pulls along codes, data, intelligence; he redirects funds and systems. He hunts through the deep.

This is their control. MI6 is their ocean.

 

 

It is when Bond is in a factory in Moscow and Q is carefully controlling the series of explosions in front of the agent as he runs, detonating forward, always forward, clearing a path, that Moneypenny sets down a mug of Earl Gray by the quartermaster’s elbow and comments, _Christ, the two of you, you can do anything together. Probably rule the bloody world._

“Down and under, 007,” Q says dryly, hitting the last of the commands. On screen, Bond obediently, trustingly rolls underneath a descending slab of titanium alloy and escapes as the factory burns behind him and the cameras short out. Q gives a satisfied smile and sips the perfectly made tea.

“You terrify me,” Moneypenny quips. “Boffin.” She ruffles Q’s hair and saunters out.

Q tries to find CCTV feed to keep 007 in his sights. Bond shoots another guard.

Wave and undertow. Between the two, the control they have, the ocean and everything in it doesn’t stand a chance.

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

“This isn’t a Walther.”

“Do you like it? I’ve taken to calling it Caspen.”

“You made me another gun?”

“I’m allowed pet projects.”

 

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

There are strings of code in between the lines that Q churns out for MI6, little snippets, harmless on their own, not interrupting the system. They lie there, festering, like defective, recessive genes waiting to manifest. They’re quite cleverly inserted, so that even if another Q-Branch tech finds them, no one suspects. The little lines of code make their way to every system in MI6, every department, every backup. They sit there. They wait.

Bond flirts with people aplenty, from the desk jockeys of accounting to the secretaries of R&D. He sweet talks, leans over desks, grips edges to keep himself steady while he shifts forward with his knife smile.

(Q is adamantly not jealous.) (This is about self-control.)

Superglue is a wonderful tool for subtly, easily attaching small things to surfaces.

Neatly and effortlessly, they take their former home and turn it into the site of their greatest destruction.

At his desk, Q could bring governments to heel, could decimate civilizations. He doesn’t think it will compare.

 

 

“Boothroyd was my foster father.”

Tea is sipped and scotch is set down on the coffee table.

“I was sixteen. He was lonely.”

A warm, calloused hand settles on a nape, under dark curls.

“Should be easy enough to blame them for that, too.”

 

 

Bond has died too many times. Q has grown up too quickly.

Bond has made too many people orphans. Q has been made an orphan twice over.

There are gunshot wounds on a left and right shoulder.

The reality of it is that MI6 is far too easy to blame for many, many things, and more than half the time it might be justified.

Water does have a way of washing away sins.

 

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

It’s sunny in England, a small miracle in itself. The daylight creeps through Q’s mint green curtains. Bond mouths a hot trail up Q’s shin as the younger man balances the illegal laptop on his thighs. A reverent kiss is laid to his gunshot wound as he types.

“I was thinking of pulling a Silva,” Q says casually, as MI6’s deadliest agent winds himself around their youngest quartermaster's slender body like a cat. “A little message, but without that gaudy laughing skull.”

“Mmm?” Bond hums against his shoulder blade, right above the left burn scar.

Q grins and types in the last few strings of words and numbers. On the other end of the city, MI6 is poised to descend into chaos.

“It’s about time I refuted them, after all,” he says, as Bond’s hand trails down his chest and the code spins down data trails, ignites the fuse. Hacking, system crashing, remote detonation: so simple.

“About what, my dearest boffin?” Bond’s got the smile, the knife smile, and this time they are both weapons enough. Q laughs and shuts the laptop, turns for a kiss.

With sunlight and their entwined bodies, revenge is a dish searing hot. Together, they evaporate the ocean.

 

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

Alec Trevelyan is the first into the former quartermaster’s flat, some six hours after pandemonium had hit MI6 and everything had gone to hell. His Walther (Q had been kind enough to leave that series intact, possibly out of some misplaced fondness for one of his most prized creations) is held aloft, arms rigid and out front, as he sweeps the area. The all-clear is called and the rest of the ops file in, including two more Double-Os; M isn’t taking any more chances.

“ _Status, 006_.” Speak of the devil.

“No one’s here, sir,” Alec confirms, lowering his gun to survey the little flat. It looks comfortable and lived in, with photographs and books and six different consoles scattered in front of the telly. Bond’s favorite scotch is on the kitchen counter. There’s a cactus on the window sill.

“ _Then find a bloody lead. He’s the only one who could have done this._ ”

 _They,_ Alec absentmindedly corrects, as he walks over to the bottle of scotch. _They,_ because there is no chance in hell Bond has let Q go into this alone. He touches the neck of the bottle, looks around. Breakfast hasn’t even been completely cleared away.

“Sir?” A new field agent ( _Jess,_ Alec thinks, if he’s remembering her red hair and dimples right) pipes up, peeking around the doorframe. “Agent 006, there’s something you need to see.”

Alec follows her down a corridor, past a few rooms (and was that an original Monet?) to what is obviously the bedroom. It’s unmade, the sheets in disarray, a pillow on the floor. There’s even a small bottle of lube by the headboard.

“Over here, 006,” Jess calls, standing by a desk.

Alec walks over.

He actually laughs.

MI6 has to hand it to them, and has no one to blame but themselves in the end. They’d been the ones to fashion the weapons, after all, never thinking what they’d made would turn against them. The words repeat over and over, a never-ending series of type, blocky white letters on a black screen.

 

(“What’s my reason?” Three in the morning; Q pressed up against the bathroom wall.

“Bad coffee?” A smirk kissed right off.

“Queen and country.” A dry reminder, hands sliding down to grip Q’s arse.

Exchange of heat. Cold tiles that had felt good against the burn scars. The warm spray of the shower covering them both.

“Two bloody weeks.” Words against a pulse. Skin tugged between teeth. “And I was just the fucking tugboat.”

“Mm.” Fingers dig in harder. “That’s yours.“

"Hmmm." A mock contemplative tone, chastised - teasingly - by a nip to the pulse. A more sober reply: “I wasn’t the primary.“)

 

_The primary is not secure. The primary is not secure. The primary is not secure._

 

 

 

**\-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --**

**  
**_Fin._

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from _Runaway_ by The National.  
>  Thank you for reading.


End file.
